Teva's Tale
by BlueShadowBox
Summary: Follow the story of Teuivae Veluthil, elven blood hunter of the Order of the Lycan from the world of Exandria, as she traverses the realm of the Fey with allies from other realms on a quest to restore a fractured Oberon to his wife, Titania.


_**Author's Note:** Greetings, lovely readers! It's been awhile since I've gotten to write in earnest. But this year I finally took the dive into the incredible world of Dungeons & Dragons...and I'm hooked, of course. It's little wonder I've read about writers getting their start in creating worlds for D it's such an amazing place for it!_

 _This story follows the character I am currently playing in a live (as opposed to online) campaign - Teuivae Veluthil, or Teva, as she prefers to be called. She's from Tal'Dorei in the world of Exandria, which is, of course the setting created by Matthew Mercer, the fantastic DM for Critical Role. She's a moon elf, and her class is a Blood Hunter, which was also created by Matt Mercer. The campaign I'm playing in is a homebrew in the realm of the Fey ruled by Titania and Oberon. Titania has gathered together a band of powerful adventurers to help her out with a little problem - namely, that her husband Oberon has been broken up into pieces (sort of Osiris-style) by an outside evil force that all parties involved have yet to identify. Titania needs help from other realms because the Fey cannot be in conflict with each other; she can't harm Oberon, he can't harm her, the Fey can't do anything against either of them due to oaths sworn, and so they're all basically stalemated. That's where Teva and friends come in._

 _I've started off her story by touching on some key moments in Teva's earlier years, events that were formative to who she is. This includes the tragedy that set her on her path, her acceptance of lycanthropy, her decision to leave her love behind to find the answers she needs, and her arrival in the Fey realm. I'll be updating her story with adventures we've had thus far as soon as I can. But for now, I hope you'll enjoy reading her beginning._

 _And of course, Dungeons & Dragons is property of Wizards of the Coast, Exandria, Tal'Dorei, and the Blood Hunter class are all property of Critical Role, and I just get to play around with them. For which I am eternally grateful! The storyline of the Fey realm conflict was created by my current DM, Paul. Teva herself is my creation._

 **Teva's Tale**

 _I.) Awakenings_

She awakens in a forest clearing, the scent of pine and earth and spilled blood filling her nostrils, the tang of copper on her tongue. Night presses in around her from between the ancient boles of sentinel trees, the weight of shadows cast by needle-laden branches in the moonlight threatening to pull her back down into the abyss of unconsciousness. She sucks in a breath on a gasp as though she's been forgetting to do it for quite some time. The pain of the act makes her grimace and groan. It should never hurt to breathe, so she instantly knows she must have a broken rib or two.

Teva sits up carefully, blinking to adjust her eyes to the scant light, moving slowly to mind her damaged body. A shoulder throbs, a hip aches, scrapes sting across her back. She can see clearly now, elven eyes keen even in darkness, though the world is colorless in the night. The only relief from shades of grey comes where moonlight stretches pale fingers through the boughs to touch what lies below with a bluish cast - bushes, stones, the trickle of a creek running along the north-eastern end of the clearing...and something she can't immediately recognize.

She blinks again, once. Twice.

A body.

Her blood turns to ice as she goes as still as stone, her eyes taking in the motionless form of the elven man on the ground, shrouded in a tattered robe of spring green silk now leached of all color. Moonlight turns his long golden hair to silver, fair skin to stark white, torn cloth and mangled limbs to grey, all slashed and smeared and spattered with the terrible black stain of what morning will reveal as crimson. Proud strength and holy might lie dashed upon the forest floor, seeping into the pitiless earth along with his life's blood.

" _O'Su?"_

Her trembling attempt at calling out to him leaves her as little more than a dry whisper, a hint of tone squeaking free from her throat as it tightens. Panicked tears threaten to choke her and cloud her vision, but she swallows and blinks, pressing back against a nearby tree trunk to push to her feet. The pain nearly doubles her over, but she manages to stay upright, an arm wrapped around her midsection as she stumbles toward the lifeless form of her father. And she does know him to be lifeless the closer she gets, cold stillness replacing the vibrant spark she'd always sensed in him whenever he was near. Trembling fingers lift to stretch toward him…

...And then she sees another. A wolf, clearly, and quite dead, but something seems off. Then she spots the pale arm reaching from beneath the great, furred body, rigid with death. A woman's arm. Her shaking fingers retreat to cover her mouth as the tears sting the edges of her eyelids, and she haltingly sidles around the creature, coming to a stop near its stomach. _"O'Si?"_ Her mother, living wellspring of arcane power and the gentlest heart she has ever known, lies crushed beneath the beast. The tears break free with a broken wail before Teva catches her breath harshly, looking around frantically.

"Rualien? Lharast? Duram!"

Her sister and brothers had been fighting beside her against the attacking wolfpack, all skilled with blade and bow...but there had been so many. Teva herself had been thrown, knocked unconscious. She hadn't seen the ends of her parents…

Nor of her poor sister Rualien, whom she finds dashed against a boulder near the creek. Or her brother Duram, now sprawled atop another dead wolf, his sword through its chest...but his own slashed asunder. Her eyes streaming, Teva circles the clearing as best she can, tripping over rocks and divots in the earth, calling raggedly for Lharast. In the end, she doesn't find him, and the faintest flicker of hope that he's escaped the violence that claimed the rest of her family takes hold in the shattered ruins of her heart. But it is not enough to sustain her. Not enough to to keep the strength in her battered body and torn soul.

Why them? _Why?_

She crumples to her knees in the shrouding of cold moonlight and howls her grief from the depths of brokenness, jagged cries of utter loss rending the depths of the night. Perhaps she has not lost _all_...but there is not enough hope to spare for her to know the difference.

* . * . * . * . *

She awakens upon a bier of pine boughs and woven reeds, torchlight flickering at the edges of her vision. She breathes in deeply...and /tastes/ the pollen borne upon the spring air even in the night. Smells the others standing around her, each scent as unique as their appearances. She can hear each breath they take and discern every murmur and whisper with a clarity that nearly makes her panic. She sits bolt upright, breathing harshly, but goes immediately still when she finds herself facing the points of two swords. Something bright and burning tingles the skin at her neck and makes her nostrils flare - silver. It's something she knows instinctively and flinches slightly away from, despite never experiencing it before tonight.

This is how she knows the change in her blood has taken hold in full.

Keen blue eyes fix on the others of the Order who hold their blades to her, wary of the blood rage that always comes as a risk with the Taming. But while she feels the fire of the beast in her veins and finds some remote part of herself tightening the bindings on the wolf now residing within her, she is herself. "I am in control," she tells them evenly, looking from one to the other with stoic assurance. Their swords lower fractionally as another man comes into view - Jeryn, the big, black-haired half-elf with eyes of amber. He surveys her carefully, and she endures his gaze for a long moment before glancing downward, examining her forearm. His bite, though recent, has almost healed already. She peers back up at him, and he nods to her guards, who sheathe their weapons and step away.

Jeryn draws closer as Teva rises, looking down at her from a full head above her not-inconsiderable height. "You are in control...but you feel it, do you not?" he asks, his voice a low rumble not far removed from the growl of his own inner wolf. "The yearning of her to be free, to run swiftly and feel the stroke of the Moonweaver's fingers over her fur?"

Teva's brows arch high as a frisson runs down her spine, his words ringing true, and she gazes out over the forest at the full moon, breathing deeply as she gives a single nod. "There's so much more to the world now," she whispers, feeling momentarily overwhelmed by the newfound sharpness to her senses. Jeryn draws up beside her to take in the same view, a grunt of agreement answering her words. Her eyes turn squarely back upon him, her jaw tightening. "How soon until I may hunt?"

The ones who hunted and killed her family. Who might have stolen Lharast. The promise of being able to do so and to understand _why_ the wolves had done what they'd done is what brought her to the Order of the Lycan. She has worked diligently and relentlessly, some might say obsessively, to reach this point, absorbing yet shunning the evil in order to use it against itself. She feels ready _now._ But she does know that she has much to learn yet.

Jeryn says as much, of course. "Soon enough, Teuivae," he answers. "There is much to master. But we have time. Come." He gives her a significant look and walks ahead, turning to face her after several strides. "Run with me. Your very first."

It is the first step - a willful unleashing of the wolf within after accepting the blood curse...or blessing, as some would say. Perhaps it is both, in the end. But she has a long time to decide which _she_ believes it to be. Right _now_ , she turns her focus within, lips curving into a subtle smile as she loosens her hold and feels the newborn beast inside her rejoice. Teva's body arches, growing and stretching, the silver-gold of her hair unfurling to shroud her form in glistening fur of the same hue. The nails on her toes and fingers elongate and sharpen into almost pearlescent claws. Her eyes, though they grow larger and more salient, retain the glowing blue flecked with gold of her elven self.

Jeryn looks on, approval gleaming in his amber gaze, and lets himself melt into his own wolf form, brawny and black to blend with the shadows. "Speak your name," he instructs, his words clear despite his transformation making his voice quite gruff. "It is part of your control over the beast."

It takes Teva a few long moments of concentration, the new form of her mouth alone requiring some feeling out. But eventually, she does manage it. "I...am Teuivae Veluthil." Unmistakably bestial, but unmistakably her as well. Jeryn bares his teeth in a feral grin and bounds forward toward the forest, Teva springing after him.

She races through the concealment of shadow and the caress of moonlight and howls her triumph into the night. A bittersweet victory, this taking of the Hunter's Bane and her acceptance of the Taming. But for the first time in decades, she feels closer to understanding...and closer to finding her brother, if he does indeed still live.

* . * . * . * . *

She awakens in the warm circle of his arms, tugged from dreams of lightning over distant mountains under a strange sky by the touch of the Moonweaver's light. Another full moon, and her blood is stirring as it always must, despite her level of control. She knows his must be as well, yet he remains still, save for the rise and fall of his chest against her back. Carefully, Teva turns in his arms, studying rugged features softened by the tranquility of sleep with a growing ache in her heart.

This is the fourth dream this month...and she is now certain of what she has to do. But she cannot remain here to do it.

She tilts her head to feather a kiss to his shoulder and then quietly slips from the bed, moving to the chest at the foot of it to find her clothes. Her armor is donned after that, deep brown studded leather over fine golden chain with a hooded cloak shrouding all of it. Her longsword, the silvered blade called Moonlight's Vengeance, is belted at her hip, the longbow named Crescent Moon slung over her back with its arrows at her other hip. The round shield bearing the symbols of the Stormlord and the Moonweaver is lashed to the filled pack she slings over her shoulders. Taken altogether...it is all she needs to survive.

"I am sorry I can not be the peace you seek, Teva."

His tone, though quiet, carries a melancholy, subdued edge that he never lets anyone else hear, and she feels her heart breaking all over again. "You have always been my peace," she murmurs thickly in answer, over-bright eyes finding his. He's sitting at the edge of the bed, his waist shrouded by the blankets. "I need to take my hunt further from here, Jeryn. If I don't...I may never learn the truth-"

"I will not try to stop you." But the way he looks at her nearly does the job on its own. It takes all of her resolve not to unshoulder her pack and go to him. "I know I cannot. And I know this will not end until you do go." Silence hangs between their locked gazes for interminable moments, volumes wrought by the bond forged and made more intimate over years spoken above and beyond what more words might say. Until he breaks it once more. "Teva…"

She senses what he's about to say before hearing it and crosses to him swiftly as he speaks her name, pressing her fingers to his lips to stop him from speaking on. "Shhh… Not until I return, Jeryn," she whispers, and leaves him with a kiss that ends before she loses her resolve. She slips out the door and is gone, swift as a puff of breath in the winter night air and silent as a shadow.

From the depths of the forest that ensconces the sanctuary kept by the Order that she has long called home, she howls her sadness into the night. Mournful and distant, it rises above all to be joined by another, and though her ears may not hear it...her heart does. Her return is uncertain, but the one she leaves behind is enough to preserve her hope for it.

* . * . * . * . *

She awakens in a meadow beneath an unfamiliar sky, glimpses of color swaying in a gentle breeze in her periphery. Blinking up at the strange green sun, she takes a moment to assess herself. No pain, no illness, her weapons and armor and pack intact...but there _is_ an oddness in her blood, subtle yet unmistakable. Something is different _within_ her here, apart from the obvious oddities without. Yet she has no time to sort through it now, a sense of urgency spurring her into motion. She _needs_ to attempt to get her bearings at least, if bearings may be had.

Sitting up, she finds herself peering out across a vast field of flowers blooming in every hue imaginable...and some she's not certain she's ever seen before or knows a name for. Swarms of what she takes for bees appear to be concentrated around many of them...and above are two _more_ suns, red and blue. She considers this a moment and looks back down, unwilling to consider the implications of the alien sky just yet.

Though she remembers nothing of how she came to be here, she has the distinct impression that she is _meant_ to be, that her arrival carries a purpose. She even bears a physical mark that indicates as much; she can feel it tingling at the juncture of her collarbones despite not being able to see it. As she comes to her feet...she discovers there are others who have awakened with her. Most incredible is the living suit of ornate armor from a realm not her own - Siegfried, who tells her that he was once a man whose soul was thrust into and bound to the armor upon his death, though it was not a fate he chose.

Most _disturbing_ is the grey-skinned tiefling woman whose nature, she suspects, is not of the living. All that Teva is warns her to be cautious around the one called Apochrosi, though she endeavors to be civil for the moment. And then there is the tiefling child who attempts to skulk at the edges of their collective perception. The armor man deems the boy "Urchin" when he doesn't give his name, which he doesn't seem to mind. It's _his_ presence that perplexes Teva most, however. What in Exandria - or any other realm, for that matter - would one so young and timid be doing among them?

All she knows is that there is going to be much to discover.

And what she discovers, setting off in such unlikely company into this breathtakingly beautiful yet foreign realm, is that _that_ may be the biggest understatement of the three centuries she's lived thus far.


End file.
